Tag Archives: border

At 5am on 6 January 2016 Border Force officers at the UK inward tourist controls at the Channel Tunnel in Coquelles, France stopped a British-registered car containing 2 men and a woman. Enquiries by Border Force found the vehicle’s driver, Ana-Maria Roman, and the other passenger, Skender Amati, had left...

Responding to the publication of national insurance number registration statistics by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Employment Minister Priti Patel said: ‘These figures – which had to be dragged out of the government – show the scale and impact of immigration from the EU is even higher than previously admitted. It is out of...

MSPs have hit out at the Westminster government’s Immigration Bill during a Holyrood debate. French-born SNP MSP Christian Allard led a debate “condemning” the bill, saying he was “appalled” by it. Labour members also spoke strongly against the bill, which proposes a new offence of illegal working and requires landlords...

(UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency reported on Tuesday that some 16,000 Nigerian refugees fled to Cameroon’s Far North region over the weekend to escape clashes in north-east Nigeria between regional military forces and insurgents. The Cameroonian authorities told UNHCR that the refugees had come from villages caught in the...

Jaber border crossing, Jordan–Along a dirt track on an unexpectedly cool and windy night on Jordan’s border with Syria, as shadows lengthened across the barren hills, UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie listened to the stories of men women and children who had fled Syria just hours before. She heard stories...

Two recent books look at what states do to people at their borders and how this often reflects what they do to others on their territory. Take note: Police regimes at national frontiers have a disturbing tendency to become police regimes over everyone… MAY 20, 2013 BY DON FLYNN The...

Eleven people have been arrested by the UK Border Agency following a joint operation to tackle illegal workers in Southall. On Tuesday 12 March, agency officers, together with colleagues from the Metropolitan Police, attended a location on King Street, targeting individuals who gather in the area looking for casual labour...

IRIN) – Two years after fleeing the civil war in Libya, hundreds of sub-Saharan African and Arab refugees, most of them ex-migrant workers in Libya, are still holed up in a camp on the Tunisian side of the border. Choucha camp, 5km inside Tunisia, is run by the UN Refugee...

UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie has travelled to the Jordan-Syria border overnight on Wednesday-Thursday to meet frightened and exhausted Syrian refugees who had just completed the perilous crossing to safety in Jordan. “What I saw last night is a dramatic example of the plight of hundreds of thousands of Syrians...

The troubled UK Border Agency has built up a backlog of 276,460 immigration and asylum cases that it has not resolved, MPs have revealed. Keith Vaz, chair of the Commons home affairs committee, said the figure, comprising all outstanding UKBA cases, had been calculated for the first time. “This backlog...

The UN refugee agency is expanding aid operations for refugees in South Sudan’s Yida camp, whose population has swollen to more than 35,000 people. People arriving at Yida cite worsening security and humanitarian conditions in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, where they fled from. An average of 430 refugees have...

Andrew Mok, computer open in front of him, faced the Sudanese man across the table in a converted freight container and began the interview. “Please do not make any false statements because that could have a negative impact on your application,” the 23-year-old from Hong Kong informed the man, who...

Mali is facing its “worst humanitarian crisis for 20 years” due to a combination of food insecurity affecting around three million people, and conflict-induced displacement in the north. The whereabouts and status of some 93,500 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in northern Mali is uncertain; in addition, 113,000 refugees have fled...

A few hundred metres from the dusty, sleepy crossing that divides Jordan and Syria, Mohammad* waits on the roadside clutching a plastic bag and his blazer. After 147 days in detention for participating in anti-government protests in his hometown of Dera’a in southern Syria, he left his wife and seven...

The cramped site for refugees at the Sallum border crossing has to be one of the most difficult UNHCR is facing anywhere. “The location where the refugees and [other] people of concern are accommodated is, by any definition, in the wrong place,” said Yvan Sturm, head of the UNHCR team...

No babies cry and the children are not even curious about the presence of strangers. “It is hunger and they are shy – they are not used to strangers,” explained one of the mothers, who is among a couple of thousand Malians who have crossed into southwestern Niger and sought...

The UK Border Agency’s Detained Fast Track (DFT) system was removing the majority of people with no right to be in the UK, however it was not working as quickly as intended and had insufficient safeguards to prevent people being incorrectly allocated to it, said John Vine CBE QPM, the...

Home Secretary Theresa May has said the UK Border Agency will be split in two following revelations that hundreds of thousands of people were let into the country without appropriate checks. She told MPs the UK Border Force would become a separate law-enforcement body with its own distinctive “ethos”. Mrs...

More than 44,000 people have fled the month-long violence in northern Mali, with arrival numbers in the region doubling in the last 10 days. This exodus could increase amid reports of fighting in areas bordering Algeria. Since clashes started in Mali on January 17 between the Tuareg rebels and the...

At the Beitbridge border post between Zimbabwe and South Africa, asylum-seekers from all over the continent used to jostle with Zimbabwean migrants to gain entry into a country widely perceived as a place of freedom and safety. But since border officials began turning away or arresting so-called “third-country nationals” seeking...

A “highly-troubling” lack of supervision combined with communication failures led to the UK’s border checks being relaxed too often, MPs have said. The Commons Home Affairs Select Committee said a root-and-branch reform of the way in which The Home Office and the UK Border Agency interact was needed to make...

In 2010, some 44 million people worldwide were on the run. According to UNHCR estimates, four out of five refugees found shelter in a developing country, where the refugees have to survive, often under adverse conditions. The willingness of developed countries, refugees in their territories and to take into their...